My expertise: personal finance, career transition, and retirement. My latest book is Love Your Job: The New Rules of Career Happiness. Other recent books include: What's Next? Finding Your Passion and Your Dream Job in Your Forties, Fifties and Beyond and Great Jobs for Everyone 50 +. I am a columnist for The New York Times. I am AARP's JOB EXPERT. I write a weekly column for boomer women on the new PBS web site, NextAvenue.org. My journalistic journey has taken me from Forbes to Money to Kiplinger's Personal Finance to U.S. News and World Report, where I developed the "Second Acts" column back in 2006, and then on to USA Today where I wrote the “Your Money” column. I run my own media company with the following platforms: I write non-fiction career and personal finance books and online columns like this one. I give speeches on changing careers, finding work after 50, working in retirement, ways to learn to love your job and women and money. I consult on a variety of career topics. I grew up in Fox Chapel, outside of Pittsburgh, Pa. I'm a graduate of Duke University. To learn more about me, go to http://www.kerryhannon.com/. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at kerry@kerryhannon.com. Follow me on Twitter: @KerryHannon

Why Temporary Work Is Worth It

Today was the day. I put away the last vestige of the ho, ho, ho season—the festive bowl of holiday cards with pictures of smiling kids and pets, along with the occasional annual letters detailing whirlwind lives.

As I was taking a final gander, one caught my eye. It was sent by Gwenn Rosener. Gwenn is a woman I interviewed last year about her firm Flexforce Professionals, a recruiting and staffing company in the Washington, D.C., area that focuses on helping professionals, including retirees who want to continue working, find part-time work with competitive pay.

Gwenn, once an Ernst & Young senior manager, who holds a Harvard MBA in her back pocket, and her partners Sheila Murphy and Ellen Grealish all have executive-level management and consulting backgrounds. Grealish worked at Hewlett-Packard and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), and Murphy held consulting posts, mostly with government clients, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

They started their business in 2010, and reeled in revenues of $140,000 with a profit of $47,000 that first year, placing CFOs, HR managers, business development and proposal writers, web designers, analysts, bookkeepers and office managers–all in part-time or temporary jobs.

“Dear Kerry,

Hope you have a wonderful holiday. Enjoyed connecting with you this year,” Gwenn wrote. “Thank-you for letting us share our story. A quick update since our last talk–we actually ended up quadrupling our sales this year and surpassed the $500k mark. It surprises even us.”

It didn’t surprise me. Temporary staffing is the bee’s knees these days.

Recently, the big online job site,CareerBuilder, released a Harris Interactive survey that showed that more than a third of American companies are operating with smaller staffs than before the recession.

To keep business trucking along, 36 percent of companies will hire contract or temporary workers in 2012, up from 28 percent in 2009, according to the survey of more than 3,000 hiring managers and human resource professsionals.

And nearly a third of those employers want to hire before April. “Temporary jobs from staffing and recruiting firms are playing an increasingly important role in the economic recovery,” according Eric Gilpin, president of CareerBuilder’s Staffing & Recruiting Group.

Based on CareerBuilder’s data, the following are examples of staffing and recruiting positions currently in demand: Occupational or Physical Therapist and Speech Language Pathologist, Java or .Net Developer, Network Engineer, Administrative Assistant, Customer Service Representative and Business Analyst.

I get it. From the employer’s perspective, hiring temporary workers simply makes sense in many circumstances. They can staff up for short-range project without the price tag of healthcare and other benefits.

WATCH THIS NOW:

And in this employment market, they can attract the crème de la crème. These are often workers who have been downsized, or taken early retirement packages. Once the dust clears, they discover they either need or want to keep working. (Please continue on next page.)

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There’s no shame in doing temp work for people that are trying to make ends meet while they’re looking for something better. This isn’t the 1960s anymore, you have to get used to switching up jobs. Be flexible, work on stuff on the side, and take the work you can find because the bad economy isn’t going to improve anytime soon.

Thank you so much Kerry for a great article. We couldn’t agree more with your point that temporary jobs can not only help hone your skills but keep your confidence level up! This is an issue we often discuss on our blog, and we also feel it’s important to consider both the job seeker’s and the business perspectives of contract roles: http://www.momcorpsnyc.com/candidates/should-i-take-a-contract-position/

I was unemployed in Sep.2008 , the temporary agencies moved to the top of my list a year later when I was not getting any where. In the past, they had always been my ace in the hole. However, I couldn’t get them to even consider my resume and I couldn’t get them to send me temporary, short-term positions. I was 56. Now I am 60, when unemployment ran out I went back to school and have lived the past year on student loans. I will be done in June. If I can not get anyone to hire me, what do I do with a 1988 BS in environmental science, 16 years in an R&D lab, and now a year of training as a Medical Assistant. Temporary agencies are not looking at the over 50 crowd anymore.

Unemployed Sep. 2008, age 56; temporary agencies were always my ace in the hole in the PAST. After a year of zero progress in the job hunt, I contacted them. They did not seem interested, talked to several and sent in resumes, tried to follow up with them, offered to come in in person, they said no. No one ever called me in for an interview. When my unemployment ran out, I went back to school and have lived on student loans for a year. Now I am sixty, school will be done in June. I have a BS in environmental studies, 16 years in a research lab, and in June will have a certificate as a Medical Assistant. Temporary agencies do not seem to want to talk to anyone over 55. Now what?

Kerry, thank you for sharing your insight! You certainly nailed the greatest benefits of temporary work which many people sometimes fail to see as they view this industry as rather “unstable” work when in fact it has so much to offer people of all trades.

I have been working with an excellent temporary staffing agency myself for the past two and a half years and I have to say that it has been and continues to be a great experience that has allowed me to thrive in continuously evolving environments, connect and built strong relationships with others, obtain valuable knowledge and of course make great money doing work that I love all while still pursuing my post-secondary studies. Many of those who do this work either attend school, work part or full time and still enjoy the benefits you mentioned through the flexibility this type of work offers so nobody is limited!

I would highy encourage anyone looking for a bit of excitement in work to seek out such opportunities as you never know where they may lead in the future.